Dialogue with Kalle Könkkölä, Executive Director of Kynnys (1/3)
Vie, 04/07/2014
Kalle Könkkölä is Executive Director of Kynnys, also known as The Threshold Association, one of incluD-ed’s founding network partners. In Finland, Kalle is a well-known public figure and known as political activist and role model for people with disabilities. In May 2014 at incluD-ed’s 5th network meeting in Helsinki, Kalle answered various questions from the incluD-ed partners and the Network Secretariat.
The following dialogue has been enriched with more detailed information and extracts from other interviews:
- - Jamie Bolling - ENIL Executive Director (2012): “The World Became my Room”, Kalle Könkkölä.
- - Pert Tijokinen - DisabilityWorld (2003): Finland: Kalle Könkkölä, Disabled Activist.
- - Adolf Ratzka - Director Independent Living Institute (2008): Interview with Kalle Könkkölä.
- - Kalle Könkkölä (2008): 25 years of Independent Living in Sweden. Panel: Independent Living abroad - global perspectives, speech by Kalle Könkkölä.
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KALLE KÖNKKÖLÄ – SOME BIOGRAPHICAL FACTS
Kalle Könkkölä was born in January 1950 with a physical disability and doctors gave him little chance to survive the first years. His mother and father refused to send him away to a special education school, which Kalle claims is the reason he was able to live and work successfully integrated into society.
Kalle has never been stopped by his disability or by his respiratory dependency in his fight for the rights of people with disabilities. Since 1973, he has worked for the Threshold Organisation, a disability association he co-founded. He still feels inspired when he can motivate people with disabilities to take action to influence and change their situation. In his position as vice-chair and later chairperson of Disabled People’s International (DPI), Kalle travelled around the world – from Africa to Asia – to meet with other leaders and with people within the disability movement itself.
Kalle also co-founded the Finnish Green Party and was a member the Finnish Parliament from 1983 to 1987. After becoming a Member of Parliament, his doctor changed his medical status so that he lost his personal assistance and had to move to an institution. Life in the institution was challenging for Kalle. He had to wait for the institution personnel to assist him with his morning routine and arrived late to the Parliament. He was not permitted to decide for himself on the timing of his schedule, and had no say in the matter. Fortunately, he regained his personal assistance, which would once again allow him to live a life of independence.
incluD-ed recommends Kalle’s book The World Became My Room (1996), an amazing story about his activism and the Finnish Independent Living movement he leads. Kalle still fights today for a better world. He is against special education schools and institutions, and says: “If society is allowed to continue to hide people with disabilities, they will continue to forget them.”
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KALLE KÖNKKÖLÄ AND KYNNYS, OR THE THRESHOLD ORGANISATION
Can you shortly present Kynnys?
Kalle Könkkölä: Kynnys, or the Threshold Organisation, was founded in 1973 by university students to foster the education of students with disabilities at university level, but with time, it broadened its focus on human rights issues. As a cross-disability organisation, Kynnys has very powerful links to society and is a strong networker in order to multiply the possibility to influence. Its strategy is - and has always been - to be in the right place to influence and advocate for the rights of people with disabilities.
Today, Kynnys has 6 offices in Finland - the main offices are in Helsinki (20 people) and Turku (3 people). In total, Kynnys employs 20-30 people and most of them have a disability. It has trained a lot of people with disabilities in order to hire them afterwards.
40% of Kynnys budget comes from the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs for International Cooperation projects in Africa and the Balkans. Furthermore, Kynnys offers trainings and other courses on disability issues, and sells architecture advice for accessibility and other advice services.
Can you tell us how it all started?
Kalle Könkkölä: I graduated from high school in 1969, and I went to study mathematics at the University of Helsinki. I studied very hard, and I wanted to become a mathematician in an insurance company. That was my plan because at that time they got a good salary. Also, math books were physically the lightest books in the whole university to carry, law books were the heaviest. So I started studying and I met a few people with disabilities there. For us the simplest things were complicated, like "where is the lecture, in an accessible or inaccessible room?" The professors would say "I have been lecturing in this room for 20 years, I won't change my room". It was really difficult, so I wrote an article for the student union newspaper, saying that we needed a union for disabled students. We started this in '72 and were legally established as Threshold Organisation in '73. When I say we, I mean a handful of disabled students at the University of Helsinki.
When we started out, we were very much involved in making it possible for students with disabilities to study at the University of Helsinki. There were so many issues, on how to organise lecture rooms and transportation and so on. We solved the problems very quickly, and at that time people in Finland were not used to those with disabilities being active. We have to remember that Finland 35 years ago was totally different from what it is today. Luckily most of the changes have been positive. In 1973 you did not see any people with disabilities anywhere, only if you went to institutions. That was the place where you could meet people with disabilities. Those who were not in institutions were in their homes. They could never get out of their homes, because most of the buildings were not accessible. They still aren’t, but some of them are better now.
But of course, the problems at the university were minor compared to other problems people with disabilities had at that time, and still have today. We soon widened our activities to include all kinds of human rights issues. We had some basic ideas which are still very valid, that we're a cross-disability organisation, a human rights organisation, run by disabled people. At that time in Finland, most disability organisations were run by people without disabilities. We’re a non-charitable organisation. We are not giving services, because we are consumers. We're consuming services, and this was especially true back when we started, when there weren't so many. That was our starting point, in 1973, and also the end of my career as a mathematician, because I became politically active and that took all my time.
How did people first react to the Threshold Organisation?
Kalle Könkkölä: The whole attitude towards disability and people with disabilities was so different. We were miserable. We still are but we do not like other people to know that. When we were out in the streets people would come and speak to you and feel so sorry for you: “Oh, oh, how terrible. You have polio, how terrible.” I did not have polio but it was still terrible. That was life in those days. I was lucky because my parents did not send me to the special education school. I think that saved me from many problems. But I did not see any people with disabilities. If I saw another person with a disability I would cross over to the other side of the street, or I’d try as I could not go by myself. I always had the feeling that I wanted to go nowhere near those people because they might see that I was disabled too. That was terrible, but I think everyone with a disability has had this experience at some point in their life. Especially in adolescence, you have this teenage problem. Nowadays I think it is much nicer to see disabled than non-disabled people.
We had some principles back then that we still keep. We were against institutions. We were against charity. We were not only against but we also promoted some things. We promoted the fact that we are citizens. We promoted our right to make decisions about our own lives. Also, nobody was representing those who were living in institutions, so we did this. These were the basic ideas.
From the start we have seen disability as a political issue, a human rights issue and not a medical or even a social issue. It is a strange thing that people with disabilities organise according to their disabilities. We organise ourselves medically and then we fight against it. I also belong to the Muscle Disease Association in Finland but I have never been very amused by this. It is much more fun to be with people with different disabilities.
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Dialogue with Kalle Könkkölä, Executive Director of Kynnys (1/3)
